The Moses Montefiore Academy sits on Chicago's West Side, built for students other schools have already expelled for violence, many carrying diagnoses of emotional or behavioral disorders. This eight-part VICE News series follows the staff trying to keep those kids out of juvenile detention or psychiatric commitment, filming inside classrooms and inside the students' homes. The first episode centers on two 14-year-olds: Cortez, whose mother blames his absence of a father figure on the boy's dad, who is serving a life sentence for murder, and Crystal, who has stabbed classmates and been caught shoplifting since enrolling, pushing her mother toward what she describes as a nervous breakdown. Teachers and counselors work case by case, de-escalating fights and phone calls home, with little room for error and no guarantee any of it holds. The camera stays close and observational, catching the daily grind of a school built entirely around kids everyone else gave up on, and the adults still trying not to.